A new word, the result of much consideration with its author, or a term which, though unknown to the language, conveys a collective assemblage of ideas by a fortunate designation, is a precious contribution of genius; new words should convey new ideas. Swift, living amidst a civil war of pamphlets, when certain writers were regularly employed by one party to draw up replies to the other, created a term not to be found in our dictionaries, but which, by a single stroke, characterises these hirelings; he called them _answer-jobbers_. We have not dropped the fortunate expression from any want of its use, but of perception in our lexicographers. The celebrated Marquis of Lansdowne introduced a useful word, which has of late been warmly adopted in France as well as in England--_to liberalise_; the noun has been drawn out of the verb--for in the marquis's time that was only an abstract conception which is now a sect; and to _liberalise_ was theoretically introduced before the _liberals_ arose.[28] It is curious to observe that as an adjective it had formerly in our language a very opposite meaning to its recent one. It was synonymous with "libertine or licentious;" we have "a _liberal_ villain" and "a most profane and _liberal_ counsellor;" we find one declaring "I have spoken _too liberally_." This is unlucky for the _liberals_, who will not-- Give allowance to our _liberal_ jests Upon their persons-- BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. Dr. Priestley employed a forcible, but not an elegant term, to mark the general information which had begun in his day; this he frequently calls "the _spread_ of knowledge." Burke attempted to brand with a new name that set of pert, petulant, sophistical sciolists, whose philosophy the French, since their revolutionary period, have distinguished as _philosophism_, and the philosophers themselves as _philosophistes_. He would have designated them as _literators_, but few exotic words will circulate; new words must be the coinage of our own language to blend with the vernacular idiom. Many new words are still wanted. We have no word by which we could translate the _otium_ of the Latins, the _dillettante_ of the Italians, the _alembique_ of the French, as an epithet to describe that sublimated ingenuity which exhausts the mind, till, like the fusion of the diamond, the intellect itself disappears. A philosopher, in an extensive view of a subject in all its bearings, may convey to us the result of his last considerations by the coinage of a novel and significant expression, as this of Professor Dugald Stewart--_political religionism_. Let me claim the honour of one pure neologism. I ventured to introduce the term of FATHER-LAND to describe our _natale solum_; I have lived to see it adopted by Lord Byron and by Mr. Southey, and the word is now common. A lady has even composed both the words and the air of a song on "Father-land." This energetic expression may therefore be considered as authenticated; and patriotism